Gray breathed deeply against the pain. He brought his feet up and bent over into a fetal curl. He shook uncontrollably. His skull was a universe of suffering, the pain blocking other senses, blinding him and deafening him, making him useless in the field. His thoughts were dim pulses. He was safe in the trees, he knew, but he would have to move out, and he had to gather himself. He had to push aside the agony from his back and head and shoulders and leg.
He closed his eyes. Isolate the pain. Move into myself. Cut out every sensation that would not work to defeat the Russian. Concentrate. Push it away. Survive this day.
He opened his eyes. He drew himself upright. He surveyed himself. His left arm was burned from the shoulder to the elbow, resembling bacon. His belly had protected the skin below the elbow. The back of his shirt was gone, burned away, and Gray knew the skin there was scorched, leaving pink and red blotches. Same with his shoulders. His left pant leg had burned away, and the skin below was blistered and red and pink and already leaking. When he gently touched his scalp his head was jolted with pain. A little hair remained in clumps, but most of his scalp was exposed and raw with burns. His left ear was curled by a burn.
He brought his hands up to his face. He curled his trigger finger. Gray's hands were fine, and he now found he could focus his eyes. And he could run. He was still alive and could still work his rifle.
He whispered, "I'm not done yet, you son of a bitch."
But his camouflage had gone up in smoke. He was as pink as a pig. His back and leg and arm and shoulders were a vibrantly colorful target. In the green and brown and gray bowl Gray's raw skin would stand out like a flare.
He had to camouflage himself, and he knew he would have to improvise and he knew it would test him to his limit. Gray opened his pack to retrieve his canteen. He twisted off the cap and allowed himself two swallows. Then he crawled several feet from the tree to a flat patch of ground. The soil had a thin mat of needles and dried leaves and wild straw. Gray poured the water from his canteen onto the ground, shaking the last drops from it. Then with his hands he worked the ground, kneading it like a child making mud cakes. He spread the mud out, making a bed of it.
Gray sat down at the edge of his mud bed, locked air in his lungs, and leaned back onto the mud. The pain was as if a knife was sinking into his back again and again, a red wash of agony. But Gray squirmed on the ground, rubbing his back into the mud and leaves and sticks and straw. And when he thought he might pass out from pain, he forced himself to go on, to continue to writhe until the mud had caked his back.
He sat up shivering with agony, but before his resolve melted with pain, he scooped up handfuls of the remaining mud and dabbed it onto his leg, pressing it onto the oozing red burns up and down his leg. His hand shook with suffering. He pressed more mud onto his shoulders, then onto his face. His teeth were clamped so tightly together his jaw ached. And finally he lifted the last of the leaf and straw and mud mix and crushed it onto his skull. He bucked with agony and his hands faltered. But he pressed scoop after scoop of it on, caking his head with the mud mix.
He gasped with the pain, and he had to will himself upright. He breathed against the suffering, and again focused. He looked at his leg and hands and shoulders. He resembled a bog monster. After a moment he could bend down for his rifle and pack. He put the empty canteen back into the backpack. With the Winchester in one hand and the pack in the other, Gray slowly surveyed his position. The trees offered cover in all directions. He walked unsteadily up the gradual hill into the deeper cover of the forested south slope.
Nikolai Trusov lowered his binoculars and rubbed his eyes. From his hide he had been scanning the grass. He crossed his brow with a hand, bringing away dampness. He had patted mud onto his face and hands, and had stuck small branches into his clothing. His hide was behind a fallen and decayed pine trunk. His arms rested on a sunken portion of the trunk where hooves had chipped away at it over the years, as the tree had fallen across a deer path. His Mosin-Nagant rifle was at an elbow and his pack was near his feet. On his head was a brown wool watch cap. He had camouflaged the cap by pressing fistfuls of pine needles onto the fabric. He wore the cap high, above the caked mud on his forehead. His scar resembled the flat plates on a lizard's back. Only four inches of Trusov's head showed above the log.
He brought up the binoculars again, pressing them against his eyes. Again he stared at the wild grass near the mouth of the bowl, the same carpets of grass he had been looking at for hours. He knew his mine had forced Gray to enter the bowl in the grass. But the grass field was broad, and he had not seen any movement in the field, no twitching grass. Trusov nodded, an acknowledgment of the skill required to move unnoticed through grass. But Trusov had known of Owen Gray's skills for decades.
The blaze was reaching the east end of the field. Fire was almost done with the grass. Yet he hadn't flushed Gray. Gray hadn't bolted. Where was he? Trusov lifted the rifle to use the scope for a closer view of the charred field. Burned clumps of grass, not much else. Impossible to hide in the field because the fire had burned away the grass cover. Where was Gray?
Trusov needed a closer look. He crawled away from the hide, rose to a crouch, and sped fifty yards east down the gradual incline toward the blackened field. He dropped to a crawl, his rifle in his right hand. A perfect hide was ahead, a log topped with brush. He moved toward it, then along the log, secure behind it.
Then he stalled. An animal was ahead of him, digging with a paw at the fallen tree, then moving several steps toward Trusov. The creature walked with a rolling sailor's gait, its toes in and its heavy tail brushing the ground behind it, obscuring its trail. Its blunt nose and button eyes were followed by a mass of tan and black quills that shifted left and right as it walked. The porcupine waddled toward him, unhurried and unconcerned, safe beneath its mantle of needle-sharp barbs. Its snout was to the ground, its thirty thousand quills quivering and shifting. It did not see or did not care about the Russian. The animal stopped below the brush growing on top of the log.
Trusov may never have seen anything like it. But the Russian was in a hurry and had no time to wonder about the strange animal. The creature was in his way, occupying Trusov's perfect hide. He brought out the knife from his belt and moved toward the animal. When he reached the porcupine he slashed down once, then again, the knife cutting into the animal, blood pouring instantly. The porcupine shivered its quills and caterwauled, then trotted away, leaving a trail of blood. Trusov wiped the blade on his pant leg and returned it to his belt. He crawled into the cover of a thimbleberry bush.
He brought up his binoculars, but before he could place them against his eyes his nose came up. He had a scent. It was faint, there and gone. He sniffed the air hungrily. And the scent was there again.
He allowed himself a small smile, a terrible grin where the corners of his mouth were turned down. He had, after all, caught Gray in the grass. He smelled burned meat. Gray's burned flesh. Gray was either dead or injured. The Russian's victory was closer. Still wearing the rictus smile of a cadaver, Trusov peered through the binoculars and began scanning the blackened grass field.
Gray had to keep moving. He began a low crawl, keeping his body flat against the ground. He gripped the sling at the upper swivel with the rifle resting on his forearm and the butt dragging on the ground. He moved his arms forward and brought up his right leg, then pulled with his arms and pushed with the right leg. It was slow, but nothing of Gray or his weapon rose more than fourteen inches above the ground. His burns made it feel as if the ground was clawing at him with sharp talons. He crawled through mountain heath, its pointed leaves raking his face.